13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
Lobelia cardinalis 'Queen Victoria' is a cultivar of cardinal flower with purple foliage. It has red flowers, not blue. From what I hear, it's not that hardy and won't over winter in cold zones.
It sounds like your plant was mismarked in the first place, and that you originally had some cultivar of Lobelia siphilitica (Great blue lobelia). The plant you have now doesn't look like either.
mid summer is a lull in fragrance....
but come august.. the hosta species plantaginea... with its 6 inch trumpet flowers is sublime ... as well as many of its progeny.. like royal standard... etc ...
also.. here in the great white north.. august is time for many things that self seeded... to finally peak .. and a large area of 4 o'clocks.. can fragrance the whole yard ....
and then in fall... the fragrant autumn clematis ...
and then its winter.. and its all over ...
my point.. if you missed it.. is that there is NOT one 'best' ...
you need to plant for fragrance.. in waves.... so they bloom... one after another.. always with something coming.. something to anticipate ...
my theory.. for whats its worth ... is that the scent is a bee attractant... and by the heat of the summer.. bees are not as active.. most of their work done ... so things sorta peter out .... also.. a lot of the late summer things.. are night bloomers.. attracting the night pollinators... like moths ... [both the 4 o'clocks.. and the plantaginea]
ken
Viburnum carlesii, Lilacs, Rose 'Rhapsody in Blue', Honeysuckle, Mockorange, Kolkwitzia, Variegated iris blooms smell like grape juice, Honey Bee Blue Agastache smells like rootbeer when you touch the leaves or harvest the seeds. Lilies, 'Casa Blanca' & 'Orania', Butterfly Bush, Herbs like Fennel and Basil. Four OClocks as Ken mentioned will drift their fragrance over a 25 foot area on a warm night. Heliotrope in pots have that vanilla scent.
Campanula - So far I haven't had the luxury of becoming bored. Zoning regulations in the town where I live require no less than an acre of property per dwelling. While I don't necessarily pine for a 'postage stamp,' the swath I'm required to maintain is already roughly six times the amount of space I can even dream of singlehandedly caring for and planting. Fortunately I have the help of migrant workers from Guatemala who gladly share the labor and willingly perform the most back-breaking tasks.
Additionally, I can't say any two years running have been repeat performances in my garden thanks to extreme weather events--the October Snowstorm (2011)*, Storm Sandy (2012) & various hurricanes & tornadoes. My sun/shade patterns were altered due to extreme weather which impacted how things grew in the beds I so carefully designed & planted.
* when I was without power/phone/running water for a total of 11 days straight & had to keep my woodstove down in the cellar fired up 24 hrs. a day
Trust me when I say boredom has not been a factor.
Neil - thanks to the consequences of my parents planting things they didn't know/had no way of knowing were invasives 50 years ago, I'm very cautious about what I plant. Every state has an invasive plant list posted on the Internet which I check before setting anything into the ground.
Don't skip your due diligence before you commit what might be a colossal error & keep a large jug of vinegar in your garage year-round so you can eradicate any errors without introducing poisonous chemicals into your garden soil. Vinegar kills everything it touches--I use it primarily on poison ivy & violets--but at least it eventually dissipates (unlike Preen or other chemicals) without poisoning the soil for generations to come.
Keep in mind, Neil, that things which grow with such exuberance do so because they're invasive and you may regret planting them down the road when you attempt to remove them from your garden. When I first moved here after my Mom died, I actually hired a neighbor with a backhoe to remove lily-of-the-valley that had overtaken my front foundation beds. Who'da thunk that would be an invasive?
Don't mean to rain on your parade but a conscientious gardener thinks a lot more these days before planting. Sure would hate to read a GW post down the road about what you wish you hadn't planted.
Thank you so much gardenweed for the guidance. I will definitely be watchful. I'll also do more research before implementing something.
Btw, I'm out right now in the yard. It's 11:45pm, maybe 50f. A bit cold especially I'm just wearing shorts and a shirt. I'm enjoying the fragrance of Honeylocust's flower behind me.
I've planted Honeysuckle Goldflame today. She is really beautiful and the fragrance is out of this world. The fragrance is still not strong yet.
Again, thank you so much!
I would say 'yes' - give them a careful trim. I have been deadheading mine. They don't need a trim yet. Cutting Back in the Spring
Cut back the tips of the stems of your purple verbena in the spring to encourage branching. You'll have stockier, bushier plants with more blooms as a result. Water the plant thoroughly and apply fertilizer to further encourage growth and blooms.
Cutting Back to Stimulate Blooming
Cut back purple verbena if blooming wanes in midsummer. Trim a quarter of the height and width of the plant using grass cutters or scissors. Then, water the purple verbena thoroughly, and apply liquid fertilizer diluted to half the strength recommended by the manufacturer for standard use.
Here is a link that might be useful: Do You Cut Back Purple Verbena?
I think Ken is being serious, and I think its a possibility but its not a border plant and those on the border are not affected at all so seems unlikely. Nevertheless, I did wash the plant down for several minutes. I doubt the roots are rotting, its a dryish spot with root competition from a crimson sentry maple tree. Bugs and fungus I have not ruled out completely, will do more digging in the morning.
I have grown Incarvillea in the past, but only I. delavayii seems to show up in the nurseries, and then only very rarely. (I may see only one plant every three years, or so.) I looked up the other species you mentioned, and they look nice. I will have to check out if they will grow in our climate, and debate with myself about going the mail order route.
I love rehmannia and they grow well here. It is one of those never-too-many plants that I encourage to grow everywhere throughout the yard. I made some new beds recently by removing some concrete, and went shopping for 5 1 gal. rehmannias to plant. But both nurseries were out. They are offered off and on throughout the year, so I will wait or move some starts.
I have a gasplant that would start out neat but splay out as the season wore on. I inverted an old tomato cage (they are useless for tomatoes anyway), cut off the pointy ends and bent them into "U" shapes and used them to anchor the cage to the ground. Works with sedums too, so I imagine salvias could benefit from being "caged".
My patio stones and the area around my vegetable garden are filled with various creeping thymes, and when they are in flower the humming of the bees is nearly deafening. The bees are so drunk with pollen that they pay no attention at all to people. In all the years I have walked through these areas, i have never been stung. I wouldn't walk through barefoot, however, though I do walk in sandals.
Yep - a number of my neighbors and I are all growing them in full sun with no supplemental water and they perform well year in and year out. I now have several winter sown cultivars that bloom white making a lovely contrast with the species blue/purple. Have at it, Neil!!
Understanding its life cycle and the "seed bank" it establishes is very important. I didn't have time to read coolplantsguy's post, but I'll bet that's the point of the article. You have to have an intentional three year plan and accept you'll be chasing it around the garden the rest of your gardening life.
I took it very seriously when it showed up in my perennial beds the first time two years ago. I'm on a search and destroy mission on the borders of my property, and when I see it on my neighbor's property I'll grab it there too.
Idabean
Of note in the summary of the article is that hand cutting the stems (using a weedwacker) and spraying roundup are the most effective routes of containment of large investation.
If you've received a lot rain recently, it is a good time to tackle garlic mustard removal, because the plants will be putting out flowers = seed.
It is well worth reading the entire article. It is sobering, but good control can be had for those who are persistent and understand the plant's life cycle.
If you pinch them now, you'll diminish the number of blooms you'll have to enjoy this season.
Deadheading Shasta daisies (as with most perennials in my experience), all you need do is snap off the spent blooms at the base of the flower. There's no need to cut the stems.
Personally, I leave the spent flowers on the stems so I can harvest the abundant seeds at season's end. These are easily grown from seed via winter sowing which spells more free plants & blooms for my garden in following years.
I agree some white, silver or variegated foliage would be good to add. When you move the Japanese maple further out you might look at taller things to put behind it that will help it stand out. There might be some narrow evergreens in your area that would work. As far as perennials, there are taller grasses that are narrow.
How bout a dwarf weeping cherry tree in the place of the maple. For full sun I would recommend lavender. I prefer the angustifolias (hidcote, munstead) to the intermedias because they seem to last longer and not die out in the middle so fast (turn into ugly donuts). They can be found fairly economically.
There is a nice variegated Iris which looks great out of bloom, and it's blooms are sweetly fragrant (can smell from some feet away)
maybe some october daphne sedum for the front and late bloom. The foliage is great even out of bloom.
there's also Salvia, and agastache, Caradonna Salvia makes a nice showy clump with it's wine colored stems.
I also recommend grass. Blue Oat Grass or Elijah blue Sedge.
I highly recommend doing a google search for landscape design /perennial beds photos and see if there are any designs that catch your eye and copy them. Sometimes it's easier than reinventing the wheel for yourself.
I moved to where I am 8 years ago and have continued to battle the invasives my parents + their neighbors planted (not knowing they were invasives) 30 years ago. It was a hard lesson after moving here but the rule of thumb I've learned to live by is that anything that goes in the ground must be identified by botanical name before even a hole is dug to plant it. That has stood me in good stead but hasn't eliminated the problems that existed prior to my occupation.
It eases my conscience that I haven't knowingly introduced anything to my little green acre that's considered invasive and that I continue to eradicate things that were, however inadvertently, introduced by the previous generation.
Since you've learned your lesson, albeit the hard way, rather than burn the money, why not burn the suspect plants? Just another lesson learned the hard way. Altho' I haven't personally made that particular garden mistake in the past, I've made plenty of others for which I've either forgiven myself or blissfully forgotten.
Good on you that you checked prior to planting so pat yourself on the back for that if nothing else.
Hi neighbor :) Someone must've hated me b/c they gifted me w/ Pinellia pedatisecta many years ago. I cannot find the fonts to adequately express my hatred for this plant It is EVERYWHERE - it reseeds like the devil. lol SO glad you didn't plant it
Cut it back. You have the whole summer for it to catch up and flower. Mine gets more flowers when I do that. Leggy stems are not nice to look at, right?